The Darker Realms

So having discovered DC McGannon and C Michael McGannon via Kaos Obsidere (see my earlier review) I was keen to check out DC McGannon’s horror stories for young adults. For although I am far too old to be ever considered a young adult (if only!) it has been my experience that good writing is just good writing for any age from the teen years onwards.  And this set of wonderful halloween tales did not disappoint!

Like Kaos, Halloween Games straddles a ‘real’ world with an entirely ‘other’ world or dimension, and there are echoes of Kaos in the tales, and one disturbing, wonderful, entirely original character (with many faces and names even in this book) that walks both books and many, many realms.

In this collection we see the ‘other’ world collide in darkly creative ways with the lives of various teenagers.  A particular talent evidenced in these stories is to create very individual, realistic and relatable characters, each with their own unique voice and response to the macabre hurtling into their lives. You care about these characters and their often sad or dark fates, and the visual splendour of the descriptions in the work are redolent of the alchemy of artistry and fear.

It’s exciting to find what promises to be an entirely new vision for reality and the supernatural, and one that can traverse age groups so well.  I would note that the horror in these tales is real but-perhaps less visceral and detailed than in the adult stories of Kaos (as makes sense for the different main audiences), but they are no less impacting for that.

These stories like Kaos, seem to call out for the movie screen, or for the renderings of a graphic artist.  This does not diminish the quality of the excellent writing – instead it is a testament to it.  I read these and I want to see them as well as read. I don’t find that very often with horror, but when I do, it’s a treat.

Dare I say a Halloween treat?

Helen M Valentina 2017

Here’s a fantastic find for all horror aficionados!  This new collection of stories from a sublimely creepy, nightmarish, supernatural world is sure to delight.

The McGannon’s have rich, inventive minds and a deft way with words, spinning visceral imagery and darkly roiling emotions and psychology to create a world like ours, and yet entirely other.  A world where darkness meets interesting, inventive and poetically apt ends. A world where interweaving threads of mystery permeate what are still perfectly crafted stand alone short stories.  A world where town names of Divinity and Apocalypse are perfectly chosen and tell the fortunate or unfortunate inhabitants all they should ever need to know. As they say, it is all connected: both each tale to the other and then all to a deeper train of thought, a philosophy if you will, of the balance of a dark universe and the rough justice design of its delicious unravelling.

I loved all the stories in the collection, so it’s hard to pick favourites (rather like singling out a particularly quirky and possibly aberrant, errant child). But I did particularly love the terrifying, sad poignancy of ‘The Transient’, the haunting compulsion of “The Gravewindow’, the sheer artistic but creepy purity of ‘”The Place I Go Before my Dreams’ (and never let me have dreams like that, thank you very much – wonderful to read but I suspect less wonderful to experience!) and the way it was brought together in  the fiendishly clever “Carnival Street.”

I highly recommend this horror feast. Well written, beautifully plotted and crafted, and just terrific – if dark – fun!  I eagerly await further stories – after all, the sub-title is “The Nightmare has Begun”, so hopefully there is much more to come!

Heen M Valentina.  2017

When she was a young girl, her grandmother told Mercy a horror story.

“Come my child,” she said, wrapping her in the warmth of a blanket, as they sat near the greater warmth of the fire. “Let me tell you a story. And you must remember this story as you grow, promise me this. For it is important. I will tell you the story about the worst monster of all.”

Mercy shuddered slightly, but she adored her grandmother, and knew her stories were always the best. She would be safe, of course, to just hear the story.  For surely the worst monster of all only existed in the realm of fiction.

“There is a monster that is invisible my child.  Yet it is real and it is powerful, and it seeps within a human host with icy, gouging tentacles and burrows sudden and quiet. It is unseen, but always felt. Never known for what it is, always mistaken, like a thief in the night.

No-one knows where it came from or how it exists.  It is fully formed at its birth and un-withered as it dies.  It fills a lacuna you did not know existed in you, but its force is terrible, and its design demonic. It consumes you, piece by piece, like a witch in a gingerbread house, but silent all the while. And you let it do so, willingly, every bite.

You do not know its time.  For some it is quick and fleeting, for others slow and deliberate.  It will have its season, and as it is free to burn within, you will be focussed, singularly focussed, in ways you never were before.  Every experience will be heightened, every pain deepened. You will wish yourself free of it but the more you struggle, the more it embraces you, for that is its way.

It will endure as long as it will, stubborn and unyielding. but when it leaves it will be merciless, just gone, just an ache of a different kind.  One you may heal from, or perhaps not. Mostly it will leave a little seed of darkness and take with it its surfeit of innocence and hope, but it will then be a thing apart which you may, in time, struggle even to recall.

The monster is the most real thing in your life when it is there, and but a wisp when it is gone.”

“It sounds terrible grandma!” Mercy cried, burrowing deeper in her arms as though that might elude the grasp of such horror in the night.

“It is terrible child.”

“Is it an alien?”

“No, but it may feel that way.”

“Is it the devil?”

“No, but it may feel like his kiss.”

“Is it a ghost?”

“That’s probably the closest,” said her grandmother. “Though it never really lived.”

“Then what is the monster?” the little girl cried, dismayed.

Her grandmother looked down to her wide open, tear-filled eyes.  She thought, for a second, the future washed before her, with other tears, destined to come.

“Oh my little girl,” she said. “It’s so simple.  The monster is falling in love.”

(c) Helen M Valentina 2017